


Quick Thaw

by willowbilly



Category: Atomic Blonde (2017)
Genre: A Bathtub Full of Ice, Brief Pining, Bruises, Cunnilingus, Dom/sub Undertones, F/F, Fix-It, Light Angst, Mild Painplay, Post-Canon, Sexy Aesthetics, Smoking, Switching, Unbury Your Gays, Vaginal Fingering, Wall Sex, i mean i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-30
Updated: 2017-08-30
Packaged: 2018-12-21 15:26:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11947128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/willowbilly/pseuds/willowbilly
Summary: Lorraine's eyes are like wintry agate marbles. Dead off-green in their immaculate limn of eyeliner. And yet somehow warm, stone containing the memory of heat, of the earth's magma beneath the glacial crust. Delphine wants to burrow into her and drown, immerse herself in that molten iron core so that the damp chill of freezing Berlin winters and the cold of yet colder wars finally melts from her bones and never, ever fucking returns.





	Quick Thaw

Delphine awakens perhaps a day after Berlin has upturned itself into the giddy turmoil of miraculous revolution with a leftover terror stretched out barren as a nuclear wasteland within the curl of her cracked rib cage and several plastic bags of lukewarm water heaped up around her battered throat, slowly leaking what was presumably once an impressive collection of ice cubes into the pillows carefully arrayed under her pounding head.

The stink of fear and sweat and a certain woman's cigarettes hangs heavy about herself, and piss has dried into the mattress beneath her ass, repulsively itchy and tacky on her skin. She's never felt so disgusting, so beaten and exhausted and disillusioned, and yet simultaneously so very fucking joyously _relieved_ in all of her life. Because despite all odds she still _has_ her life. She's fucking _alive._

Before she's even levered herself fully upright Delphine has begun to drink the water straight from the dripping ice packs, tearing open one bag of stale melt after another and guzzling until her stomach feels like bursting and her abominably dry, agonized throat is soothed enough to almost permit the passage of air without it audibly whistling as it scrapes painfully past bruised and inflamed muscle tissue with every breath, the welt from Percival's garrote pulsing like a brand over her jugular. She predictably spills a good portion of the water down her chest— there's a distinct and worrying numbness in her extremities which isn't yet fading to pins and needles, probably indicative of nerve damage— and in doing so accidentally wets the edge of a heretofore unnoticed card of paper placed demurely at her elbow.

She clumsily snatches up the note before it can be soaked through and the ink subsequently smeared. Reads it amidst a flurry of desperate blinking as she tries to focus her vision and stave off the threat of hysterical survivor's tears, darkness falling in between blurry snapshots of sight like that of a camera's shutter, capturing a vital string of ill-framed photographs.

_I'm sorry I can't stay. Please take some comfort in knowing that if you're reading this, I've either dealt with him or I'm dead. Best wishes. ~L_

“Mother _fucker,”_ Delphine exclaims in a sharp snarl to the empty room, the English obscenity aptly crude on her swollen, sour tongue. She says it in either vindictive gratification or in lonely, beleaguered resentment at the abandonment, she's not sure. The stereo is blaring the building electronic beat of a pop song loudly enough to drown it out anyways.

She keeps the note.

 

~~~

 

Her superiors aren't happy when she makes it very clear that her early retirement is absolutely nonnegotiable, but fuck them. She's getting out of this awful fucking game while she has the option.

Delphine's intelligence gathering strengths had been in her ability to foster connections and in her unparalleled eye for a good picture. A picture which tells a story. She uses both these talents to wedge herself into the art business despite the new unsteadiness in her hands, the occasional dizziness which now plagues her.

It's not quite rock stardom, but it requires dedication and perfectionism and being able to divine the truth of her given subject, and it doesn't carry the omnipresent risk of a bullet to the back of the head. She throws herself into it with all the gratitude of someone granted a second chance and adapts.

 

~~~

 

Lorraine appears at the art exhibition in a New York loft which is featuring Delphine's latest and, to date, most successful work. She's in a backless dress of white satin which falls off the incomparably confident angles of her shoulders like sheets of rich cream poured over a regal ivory statue, leaving the graceful column of her slim neck and the obliquely muscular planes of her upper back gloriously exposed. There is a faint bruise of sallow green secreted off the side of her waist, in the shadow where the daring cut of the fabric parts from the dip of her flesh before gathering itself again in a pleated swoop at the very base of her spine. The sculptor has sanded too close to the keratin.

“You've an eye for composition,” Lorraine compliments her mildly, after Delphine has drifted through the sparse and quiet crowd to stand beside her. She seems even taller the nearer one gets to her. It makes something in the length of Delphine's own spine want to extend upwards. A flower reaching towards the sun.

“Not for color?” Delphine teases, for the set of photographs before them are in black and white. They're all of a lean, pale-haired woman, but only pieces of her, close-ups: the bowed, bony architecture of her foot propped alongside a chair leg, her toes poised _en pointe_ upon worn wooden floorboards; her hand laying palm-up atop her garter-clad thigh, the cigarette between her loosely curled fingers burned down to the filter, the ember perilously close to nicotine-smudged skin; a fluttering strand of blonde hair caught in the corner of parted lips, the uplifted curve of the jaw and the enticingly smooth line of her throat creating a clean swoop of negative space beneath.

Delphine studies the differences she can glean between the model in her portraiture and that of Lorraine's profile, and finds that in every aspect Lorraine wholly eclipses that which Delphine had so painstakingly tried to recreate, rendering all her depictions shallow and wanting endeavors. Mere blatant, lovesick folly, trapped behind shining glass.

“Color? I would suppose not,” says Lorraine, meditative. Her hair is the same, a fine and sun-bleached shock of straw half-turned to white gold, or perhaps in this case it is tousled cornsilk substituted for the fairy tale's spinning wheel. “But quite the affinity for shades of gray, it seems.”

“Who says that monochrome cannot be a rainbow?” Delphine quips facetiously.

Lorraine gives a slight smile, dispensing it with as much control as everything she does, and finally flicks her gaze towards Delphine. Her eyes are like wintry agate marbles. Dead off-green in their immaculate limn of eyeliner. And yet somehow warm, stone containing the memory of heat, of the earth's magma beneath the glacial crust. Delphine wants to burrow into her and drown, immerse herself in that molten iron core so that the damp chill of freezing Berlin winters and the cold of yet colder wars finally melts from her bones and never, ever fucking returns.

“I've missed you terribly,” says Lorraine. Also controlled, deliberate. Constrained in voice as she never is in violence. A tremendously bald and anticlimactic confession.

“And I you,” says Delphine. She's beaming sweetly in return, her cheeks hurting with it. Sways sideways until their elbows bump. Rises up onto her tiptoes and leans over, sly and playful even as longing squeezes her heart, watching the reflection of her own dark, full mouth in the glass of one of the picture frames as she lightly nuzzles her face into Lorraine's hair and whispers into her ear, lips brushing the velvety curve of it. “Let us be together, yes? Come home with me.”

“I really shouldn't,” Lorraine says, with an almost absent inflection of coy flirtation beneath the genuine reluctance. She has gone very, very still at Delphine's touch, a stillness which speaks of ruthlessly disciplined desire, of rapt attention.

“That is not a 'no,' _mon ch_ _é_ _ri,”_ Delphine wheedles. “I have made my choice. What is yours?”

Lorraine shivers, then, at the humid caress of Delphine's breath, and when Delphine goes so far as to take Lorraine's hand Lorraine gently interlaces their fingers without hesitation, like a reflex. “Just this once,” she says, more as if in stern promise to herself than in answer to Delphine's question.

 

~~~

 

The moment the hotel room's door is locked, a cursory security sweep completed, and the bedside radio switched on and cranked up to give them both some privacy, Lorraine is pushing Delphine up against the wall and is struggling to unbutton her gauzy blouse, one hand already tugging the hem free from her slacks and snaking upwards across Delphine's stomach. Delphine loses patience and rips her own shirt open without a care, mother-of-pearl buttons popping off sheer indigo fabric to scatter across the shag carpet about their feet in a glimmering constellation of opalescent shooting stars. Lorraine is then kissing her, biting at her lower lip as she helps Delphine shrug the mangled blouse off her shoulders, the lacy black bra deftly unhooked and swiftly following suit, both of Lorraine's hands finally cupping and kneading Delphine's naked breasts as Delphine in turn slides hers down so as to grip Lorraine's perfectly toned ass in an unabashed and delightfully effective bid at hitching their pelvises together, satin stretching threateningly taut over skin as Delphine slots a thigh between Lorraine's. They set up a slow grind, an oceanic undulation in time to the languorously devouring give-and-take of each others' mouths.

Lorraine breaks them apart after a bit to tug at Delphine's slacks, muttering, “Off, off, _now,”_ and she manhandles Delphine around to face the wall as soon as Delphine's shoved them down and stepped out of them. She immediately presses herself flush against Delphine, again finding her nipples and twisting with just the right level of cruelty to be unimaginably lovely, and as Delphine inarticulately sounds her approval Lorraine makes two clipped, precise movements behind Delphine with her legs, each accompanied by the thump of an object subsequently hitting the carpet. Lorraine's rangy body slides a couple inches shorter and Delphine realizes with an unexpected surge of lust that Lorraine has kicked off her high heels, bracing herself in a more solid stance with a tactician's efficient practicality.

“You're still taller,” Delphine observes inanely, giddily, before Lorraine crushes her flat to the wall and dives a hand beneath the waistband of Delphine's underwear to press straight into her with two fingers, sinking in wet and easy, her palm palpating Delphine's dripping sex in a delicious rhythm of shallow but vigorous thrusts until she's gasping and squirming on Lorraine's hand, underwear threatening to tear at the seams as she gyrates and fucking _mewls_ with every crook and stroke of Lorraine's fingers, and it is after an age of this that Lorraine slips back out and up to rub and pinch at Delphine's clit with wicked expertise. A warm chuckle resonates in Lorraine's chest as she puts her mouth to the corner of Delphine's jaw with a bright scrape of teeth, the vibrations of her mirth transferred smoothly into Delphine as she does so until they are shaking with it together, two tines of a struck tuning fork. She removes her other hand from Delphine's nipple and rakes her nails up to Delphine's neck, circling her throat as if to chase the ripples of her laughter. The span of her palm molds itself over where the scar would be, had there been one, with an extreme, almost contradictory tenderness.

Delphine throws her head back, arches her vulnerable trachea into Lorraine's protective, possessive touch, and squeals in wanton concert with the old psychedelic spirals of Hendrix's electric guitar riffs as her climax hits her in thunderously exultant, crashing waves, through which Delphine wonders at the fact that the contact over her throat comforts rather than disconcerts her. Feels it light a bright, indomitable affection in her which mingles seamlessly with the simmering haze of her easing pleasure.

She's pinned so securely in place that she barely has the space to buck and wring out the last of it against Lorraine's slick fingers, her knees buckling as it fades so that she would have slid ignominiously to the floor had Lorraine not plastered herself even more tightly against her, so very, majestically brutal in her passion. An alluringly elegant, destructive force of nature, always to be reckoned with.

She helps Delphine regain her balance, chivalrously steadying her as she steps back to give Delphine the room necessary for her to straighten up from the wall. Lorraine doesn't take her hands from Delphine as Delphine turns to face her, instead skating them gingerly across Delphine's collarbones and her shoulders as she moves, loathe to break the touch. A dancer helping to balance and orient their partner during a spin. Support without restriction.

There's something shuttered in Lorraine's gaze behind the frank flush of passion and the calculated artifice of situational cordiality, her reserve an obvious enough tell that it is in and of itself an indication of some tremendous emotional impairment, of judgment compromised. Of attachment where there should be none.

It is not at all what Delphine had anticipated. It is, however, exactly what she'd dared to hope. She struggles to keep her satiated grin from tipping into abject glee, overly aware that it could read as mocking or malignant, that it could spook her quarry and send the foot currently hovering over the snare fleeing for the hills.

That, or Delphine would find herself gored, which is just as likely. More so, even.

Lorraine accepts another of Delphine's kisses readily, closing her eyes as if in relief that Delphine seems not to have noticed, shedding one of her senses in quick trade for peace of mind, and this, too, is indicative of far too much trust. Of regret, of the fear of having almost lost her. A soft spot for a knife in the back which Delphine plans on unequivocally shielding her from.

The little tie holding the halter top of Lorraine's dress closed at the back of her neck is made up as a simple bow, and the ribbon releases with a sibilant whisper when Delphine tugs one of the ends smoothly free, the dress likewise hissing as Delphine slides it from Lorraine's body to be cast offhandedly away, a milky specter in a ladylike swoon soon followed by bra and the remaining sets of underwear until they are both standing before each other without a single shred of clothing between them.

Some essential, primal, voracious mischief rises in Delphine at the sight of Lorraine so brazenly naked and in need of what Delphine has already acquired, the same sort of savage whimsy which drives cats to play with their prey, and she allows it to roll to the fore. Takes the opportunity to lick a broad stripe up the middle of Lorraine's chest, kisses and nibbles along the sweep of her clavicle and nuzzles up her throat to nose at the diminutive hollow beneath her ear, where Delphine breathes her in, feeling her shiver again with Delphine's breath as though fundamentally and monumentally affected beyond reason by the palpable reminder of Delphine, alive and with her.

“My love,” Delphine purrs, and she cannot tell if it is the declarative endearment or how she then delicately sucks Lorraine's earlobe in between her teeth and _bites_ that has Lorraine giving a full gasp and a shudder, lightning crackling in its bottle, buzzing and vibrant and dangerous, and all there in Delphine's hands. The glass of it does not break when Delphine shoves her back to sprawl upon the bed, the both of them bouncing on the mattress with the force of Delphine's ardent roughhousing as she hops up after her. Lorraine is enthusiastically content to comply with Delphine's seizing of control, especially as Delphine urges Lorraine's legs apart and buries her face in the sopping, musky heat of her.

Lorraine jolts at the unceremoniously sudden, ravenous plunge of Delphine's tongue, the firm, wet, sloppy swathe which Delphine drags upwards over her luscious vulva, halting just shy of her clit. Delphine presses Lorraine's hips down to hold her still as she does it again, and again, holding her in place, and when Lorraine scrabbles at Delphine's head and then immediately tears herself away to send her hands wandering fitfully across the coverlet instead, unmoored and faltering, Delphine takes pity and takes her wrists, pins them down, and feels Lorraine settle, feels her gather the coverlet into tight-knuckled fists and begin to move at Delphine's pace, taking the delightful torment Delphine gives her, reveling in her own benevolent torture.

Delphine eats her out like this until her jaw aches nearly unbearably and Lorraine is practically gushing, all viscous, soaking, bittersweet tang, all nuclear salt, but Lorraine only makes a sound, a low groan of relief, when Delphine finally seals her mouth over the swollen nub of Lorraine's woefully neglected clit and flicks it with the tip of her tongue, hard and quick and filthy, tracing figure-eights and state secrets and tally marks for the many, many people Delphine knows Lorraine has killed, and even so Lorraine only comes when Delphine lets go of one of her wrists to slide a hand beneath the small of her back and digs stiffened fingers deep into the dead-flower bruise there. Pressure on the preexisting crack in the glass, the weak point, the focal point. The bottle cracks and shatters into a million sparkling shards with the convulsive, thunderous brilliance of a tempest unleashed.

 

~~~

 

“You are sure you will not stay? That you will not return to me?” Delphine asks, plaintively as a nightingale casting its song into the dark, cradling Lorraine in her arms as if her embrace alone would be enough to keep her there.

This time, Lorraine does not answer.

Delphine wakes after she leaves, and checks to make certain that the hotel door is locked and all the rooms are empty before she goes back to her empty bed, to the gun beneath her pillow.

 

~~~

 

It is weeks later when Delphine walks into her Parisian flat one evening to find the morgue-stark fluorescent light in the bathroom's shower on and Lorraine perched on the curled ceramic edge of the tub. She is unclothed and wet, her pale hair slicked back to drip clear beads of water down her spine, drops glimmering as they hang from her manicured mauve fingernails like tiny, bulbous claws of glass, falling to send concentric rings of ripples spreading upon the puddle forming at her feet. Besides the red and purple hints of underlying blood evidenced by the assorted scrapes and contusions which litter her person she's as white and gleaming as the polished ceramic itself, or white as fresh bone, as pure, hard-packed snow.

A thick crust of clouded-crystal ice cubes bobs atop the bathwater behind her, emptied blue plastic trays from Delphine's freezer discarded in stacks on the tile. Delphine thinks the ice clinks faintly with her footsteps as she approaches. Wind chimes of flawed quartz, unsure of whether or not they've detected a breeze.

“I've half a mind to demand what you've done to me,” says Lorraine, without turning. When she speaks again it is in a wry non-question, and her accent is slipping, drawling, melting. “But this is something I've done all to myself, isn't it.”

Delphine hesitates, halting behind but within arm's reach of her. “Is my company such a terrible thing to crave?”

“Of course not,” Lorraine says. There is a sharp touch of disdain there, reminiscent of when she'd asked Delphine of her naïveté. The sort of borderline condescension which makes Delphine bite her lip so as not to bristle, makes her dread that that's all that Lorraine really thinks of her: a sexy little fool, a good fuck and a convenient source, but not much else, not anything she respects enough to _want_ to value.

But then Lorraine repeats it, soft and sorrowful. Apologetic. “Of course not.” When she does turn and looks at Delphine her eyes are blank and cool and colorless as the ice. Delphine can see every line of her stretched to snapping, muscle locked rigid to keep from shivering itself apart.

Delphine draws a pack of cigarettes from her pocket, opens the cardboard carton flap and shakes one loose. She holds it at a polite distance in front of Lorraine's face and waits.

Lorraine glances from the proffered cigarette to Delphine, the hollow discs of her irises catching the light, and then she leans forwards to take it between her lips.

Delphine pulls free her matches and strikes one. It flares up as a flickering little blossom of rich saffron satin, casting yellow across the planes of Lorraine's face and glints of gold and orange into her eyes as she touches the tip of the cigarette to the flame and sucks inward, starts an ember burning. As she breathes out a sinuous stream of blue smoke to wreathe them, pungent and minty, the hypothermia hits her. Delphine watches as she shakes and twitches, skin jumping with the cold, her hands nonetheless steady as she brings the cigarette to her lips and inhales again. Marksman's hands. The smell of gunpowder ingrained into her fingerprints, her callouses and shrapnel scars covered with flesh-toned makeup. Relaxed and graceful, the cigarette poised lightly between index and middle finger.

The smoke billows smooth from Lorraine's bloodless, trembling lips, hanging hazy around them. The ice shifts and crackles in the water. The sullen cherry glows scarlet over skin as it crawls ever closer, ash shedding from the pillar of paper in flaky gray scales.

“I found that book of poetry, in your bedside drawer. Hidden with all those negatives of that tastefully nude blonde.”

“Self-published,” says Delphine. “It did not sell. Not as tasteful nudes do.”

The ash flutters down into the water, forms a skin over the mirror. “I would have bought it.”

“You are too kind.”

Lorraine shrugs in amiable indifference to this assertion, and then murmurs: “I'm in love.”

“Is that enough to make you stay?”

“It's enough that I'll be back,” says Lorraine. “I promise you that. I'll always be back.”

Delphine's bed is dry and cozy, her pillows deep and her blankets thick and her bedside lamp bright and tranquil, and the ink on the poetry book's pages is crisp and black as Lorraine's blown pupils. Her mouth tastes like blood and smoke and Delphine kisses her until she is warm again, heats her until her shivers die and the numbness recedes and the two of them are all that is.

 

 

 

 


End file.
